Outbreak Company: Volume 11

by Ichiro Sakaki

  Our antagonists, the Eleamachi Tribe, could change the color of their scales to match the surrounding scenery, but they didn’t actually become translucent or anything. Like a ninja hiding among the stones by wearing gray clothes, if they were to walk straight down the halls of our mansion without sticking to the walls, we would notice them immediately.

  Even so, the ability to shift colors was threatening. The patterns they assumed were detailed—and fast. Color-changing animals like chameleons and frogs couldn’t exercise their talents instantaneously. But the Eleamachi Tribe—granted they were going slowly, but they were almost indistinguishable from their surroundings within seconds of moving. Apparently there was a creature, the golden cuttlefish, that could change the color of its skin in just over a second using polarized light, so it was sometimes called “the chameleon of the sea.” The Eleamachi seemed to have more in common with the cuttlefish than with actual chameleons.

  I could hardly imagine what survival strategies had produced a tribe of lizardmen with an ability like that. Or maybe this world didn’t even function on evolution.

  I had to set those thoughts aside, though.

  “Okay, stop right there,” I declared when I saw that seven Eleamachi had entered the living room.

  At the same moment, I switched on the two key lights we’d set up in there. This wasn’t like normal illumination, coming from all around; a strong light thrown in a single direction creates shadows. In photography, this helps produce a sense of depth. In our case, though, the shadows would pinpoint exactly where the Eleamachi were. Their little invisibility trick wouldn’t work anymore.

  The Eleamachi tribesmen froze. Unsure what to shift to, their bodies were covered in a mottling of strange in-between colors. Now that I got a good look at them, I could see that they were the spitting image of chameleons. They looked basically like Brooke, but their eyes were extra large, practically seeming to pop out of their heads. To be honest, it was kind of grotesque.

  “I won’t ask you to surrender,” I said. “Go home quietly, and nothing else has to happen.”

  The Eleamachi glanced around with those bulging eyes—then they all spotted me at once and assumed fighting postures. Made sense, I guess. What special-ops squad would pack up and go home just because you asked them politely?

  At that moment, though, my friends jumped out from where they had been hiding in a corner of the room—Elvia and Minori-san, along with Amatena and Clara. All armed. Not with weapons, exactly: Amatena and Clara had a meat tenderizer and a wooden pestle they’d borrowed from Myusel, while Elvia had a stew pot. Knowing that we would be facing scaled opponents in tight quarters, we decided blunt instruments would do more good than clumsy edged weapons. Although to be fair, Minori-san was carrying her stun gun.

  I was hoping it would be enough to help us fend off enemies who were practically unarmed. Based on the Eleamachis’ special skills, I didn’t expect them to be carrying anything too large. After all, they couldn’t change the color of weapons and gear. But then...

  “Huh?” I let out a sound of shock. Each of the Eleamachi opened their huge jaws, like a tear appearing in their faces, and produced a dagger from their own stomach. And not by reaching in with their hands, either—they used their exceptionally long tongues.

  Come to think of it, Amatena had said the Eleamachi Tribe carried concealed weapons, but I hadn’t expected them to conceal them like this. I had assumed they would have brass knuckles, or maybe needles at the most. What was this, the International Shocker Show?!

  There was a piercing clang as Amatena and the others blocked the daggers with the objects they were holding.

  “Amatena Hareneiman, give up and hand yourself over to us,” one of the Eleamachi tribesmen demanded, even as he traded blows with her. They had seven fighters; we had four. Myusel and I were here, of course, and the Eleamachi probably knew about Hikaru-san, Brooke, and Cerise—but they felt they had brought enough people. The truth was, most of this mansion’s residents weren’t going to be much help in a straight fight.

  “We can give you an easy death, if you don’t struggle.”

  “Hm?” Amatena cocked an eyebrow. “No plans to take me back to Bahairam and interrogate me?”

  “Word is, it’s better if you don’t come back alive,” the Eleamachi said, rolling his big eyes.

  The next second, I let out a sort of surprised choking sound. “Guh...?!” The Eleamachi tribesmen suddenly started changing colors at incredible speed. Amatena and the others, as surprised as I was, took a step back from their opponents. The Eleamachi weren’t camouflaging themselves anymore; now we could see exactly where they were. But the rapid-fire succession of random colors made it almost impossible to tell what we were looking at—what was a hand, and what was a head? Where were their chests? All we could see were the flashing colors, no idea where the next attack might come from.

  “Hrgh—!” Amatena and Clara didn’t find it any easier to fight than anyone else. The Eleamachi pursued them as they backed up. The chameleon people moved to surround us. This must have been the ace up their sleeves, the last resort they held in reserve to give them the edge when they needed it. This went beyond hiding: they were using their color-changing abilities as an offensive tactic, to confuse their opponents. In fact, the better a martial artist you were, the more confusing it would probably be.

  “Die—!” One of the Eleamachi lashed out with his dagger.

  The next instant, a white mist hit his face. Startled, he froze, and then backed up. The mist, though, spread out and pursued him and his companions. It was coming from under my chair, and in a matter of seconds it had filled the entire room.

  “What’s this?!” the Eleamachi growled. “Are you fools? You’re just—”

  —blinding yourselves, I think he was about to say. And sure, practically speaking, we had just made it harder to see. That’s a smoke machine for you. If you use it in an enclosed space, it gets smoky.

  But that wasn’t actually our goal.

  “What’s... going on...?” The Eleamachi’s voice was suddenly sluggish. Perfect. It was working.

  “You know how a smoke machine works?” I asked, reflecting that he probably didn’t. Okay, so monologuing was more of a villain thing, but I decided to fill them in anyway. “The smoke comes from dumping dry ice into water. When the water evaporates, it causes the dry ice to vaporize and takes the heat in the air with it.” That’s why smoke machines could be used like impromptu refrigerators. Most of us have probably gotten ice cream in the summer and had it stashed in some fog-spewing water/dry ice combination to keep it cool.

  Well, that’s exactly what I was doing. Hikaru-san had a bunch of dry ice on hand to fuel his cosplay smoke machine. To be more precise, he’d apparently imported an industrial dry ice producer, with which he induced the JSDF garrison to make a bunch of dry ice. I just appropriated the extra, you might say. There was more than enough of it to fill an enclosed room with cold vapor.

  By the way, some people confuse the smoke with carbon dioxide, but actually it was just tiny particles of water and ice. Literally fog. While it dissipated into invisible water vapor in a matter of moments, it took atmospheric heat with it when it did so. And unlike humans, who could produce their own body heat to compensate, the Eleamachi were lizardmen whose body temperature would drop when they were exposed to the fog—and that meant they would move slower. Just like Brooke trying to wake up in the morning.

  “Grrrr...” Even so, it looked like they still wanted to fight.

  “Tifu Murottsu!” Myusel and I added our magic spells to the mix, causing a whirlwind in our living room. The air swirled around, the lizardmen surrounded by whipping fog that made the air colder and colder. It was like turning a fan on in a chilly room.

  And then, when they were feeling good and dull, Amatena, Clara, and Minori-san jumped on them.

  That was how we succeeded in fending off the Eleamachi tribe. Cold and slow, they were no match for Amatena and Minori-san. The
y and Clara tied up the lizards and stuck them in a bathtub full of cold water. That would keep them nice and docile for a while, ropes or no ropes.

  We left Brooke and Cerise to guard them, then the rest of us went to the living room to talk about our next move. Specifically that included me, Hikaru-san, Minori-san, and Elvia, along with Amatena and Clara; Myusel went to the kitchen, saying she would bring tea.

  “Still, the fact that their objective wasn’t arrest, but assassination...” Amatena crossed her arms. “I’m speculating somewhat, but I think it’s highly likely that the Eleamachis’ orders came from my superiors, or possibly even over their heads.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If they didn’t want to question me—if they thought it was better not to... then probably, the higher-ups were hoping to pin their own crimes on me. Then they could say they had killed me, and no one would be the wiser.”

  “Ahh. I get it...” I nodded. They say dead men tell no tales, or in this case, I guess, dead beast girls. Amatena was going to be their scapegoat, sort of like how politicians accused of corruption always tried to pin things on their secretaries.

  “That’s not cool,” Hikaru-san said, disturbed. “But it does make it look more and more like your arrest was a mistake, or at least the military police getting too eager...”

  “I wonder whatever happened to make ’em doubt you, Big Sis Ama.” Elvia didn’t seem very interested in the niceties of what was going on, but this particular detail bothered her.

  “Well, a little interrogation of our friends the lizards might clear a few things up,” Minori-san said. Then she turned toward the door. “Oh. Myusel...”

  Myusel must have been back with the tea. I turned, too, and—

  “Guhuh?”

  —froze in shock.

  That was Myusel at the door, all right. And she was pushing her tea cart, too—but there was a knife at her throat.

  “Shinichi...sa...ma...” The dark blade was pressed into the pale flesh of her neck. A gentle push, a slight pull, and the room would be a bloodbath.

  “Looks like we missed one,” Minori-san growled.

  Standing there behind Myusel was one of the Eleamachi tribe. Come to think of it, when the alarm first went off, we hadn’t been able to see exactly how many of them there were—seven, or eight? I counted seven who came inside, and had foolishly assumed that was all of them. But I guess they’d left one behind. Maybe he’d had a mission of his own, or maybe he was directing things from the rear. It didn’t matter now, because here we were.

  “Let the others go,” the Eleamachi hissed, “or the girl dies.” He didn’t shout, and there was no note of triumph in his voice. He sounded absolutely cold and calculating. If he had been agitated, I would have thought we might be able to provoke him, or plead with him—in any case, talk our way into some kind of opening. When you were dealing with someone as calm as this, that was a lot harder.

  Crap. What do we do?

  Mentally sweating, I struggled to come up with a plan, but my mind was a blank.

  Minori-san drew her 9mm. “Kill her, and you’d better believe you’ll die about one second later.” If this were a TV show or something, this was where she would make a spectacular sniper shot, hitting the bad guy in the head without grazing the hostage. But I didn’t think I could expect that now. For starters, we were dealing with a color-changing lizard, whose abilities made it very hard to tell what was his head and what was his body. And if we didn’t take him out with one single shot to a vital point, we could be sure he would cut Myusel’s throat.

  “I wouldn’t be in the special forces if I had any fear of death,” the Eleamachi returned calmly. Minori-san bit her lip and said nothing. She certainly knew and understood everything that I did.

  This was bad. We were out of options...

  Bong.

  There was some kind of dull sound.

  An instant later, the Eleamachi crumpled to the ground. Well, actually, his right arm didn’t move; it continued to hold the knife at Myusel’s throat. Slowly, the Eleamachi lowered it. It looked bizarre, but finally I caught on: someone else, behind the Eleamachi agent, was holding his arm.

  Wait...

  Someone else?!

  As we watched in amazement, someone appeared behind the reeling Myusel. They were dressed all in black, only their eyes visible. They looked even ninja-ier than the Eleamachi had.

  And then, suddenly, there were several more of the masked people. They stepped out from behind the first one, each of them also dressed in black. One went to the left, one to the right. Three of them in all. And then the one in the center pulled off their mask.

  The first thing I saw was short, blond hair. The gold-fringed face looked very familiar. In fact, two people who looked just like her were sitting beside me.

  “Big Sis Jiji?!” Elvia exclaimed.

  “Elder sister?” Amatena said, sounding every bit as surprised as Elvia.

  “Wait. ‘Big Sis’ Jiji?” The name rang a bell. Elvia and Amatena had both mentioned it to me in the past.

  “It’s Jijilea! Our big sister!”

  ...Huh? Will someone tell me what’s going on?

  What was Elvia and Amatena’s older sister doing here? Completely and totally confused, I just sat there, not moving.

  In contrast, Jijilea looked at Elvia and Amatena, and then a sort of easy smile came across her finely-formed lips. “The cleanup’s finished.”

  If nothing else, it looked like they weren’t there to hurt us. By way of proof, Jijilea and the others made a show of putting their weapons down. Each carried a short sword—almost a dagger—and of course, we didn’t know if they might have other weapons under those black pajamas. Well, there was no way to be completely sure we could trust Jijilea at this moment. The fact that she and the others were making any conciliatory gestures would have to be reassurance enough.

  For the time being, we ushered them into the living room. Elvia and Amatena laid down their arms (well, their cooking utensils), but Minori-san kept her 9mm at the ready. Given what had happened back when she’d rescued me from Bahairam, there was a good chance Jijilea knew something about the mysterious ranged weapon carried by the outlander woman. But she didn’t look overly worried about it.

  “Big Sis Jiji, what’s this about cleanup?” Elvia demanded. We were seated on the sofas, but the two people accompanying Jijilea didn’t sit down, nor did they take off their masks. They stood by the wall. Jijilea herself sat on the other sofa facing us. She really did look just like her little sister. I mean, with golden hair and all, but a short-haired Elvia had an appeal all its own. It emphasized the beast features.

  “Please don’t be upset, Elvia,” Jijilea said firmly. “I’ll explain everything.” She was smiling, as she had been ever since she first showed her face. She looked calm, in control. If Elvia was the hyperkinetic third child, and Amatena was the serious middle baby, then was Jijilea the easygoing oldest daughter?

  She broke into my mental attempt to classify the beast girls. “So you would be Shinichi-san?”

  “Huh? Er, yes,” I said, unconsciously straightening up. She gave me what seemed like a very pointed smile—then looked at Amatena.

  “I’ll tell you something, Amatena—we knew you were communicating with Shinichi-san.” She sounded completely blasé, but Amatena went stiff with shock. The elder Harneiman sister, however, went on as if she were discussing the weather. “And we knew it involved Elvia somehow.”

  “Ahh... err...” Elvia quickly looked away from Jijilea.

  “So it wasn’t too hard to guess where you’d run off to.”

  “And so you’re here to arrest me...?” Amatena’s voice sounded even flatter than usual; maybe she was really worried.

  Jijilea, though, shook her head. “No. Different issue.”

  “Why, then?”

  “You’re more than aware of the corruption spreading through the upper ranks of the military right now, yes?” She had the tone of housewife spread
ing gossip: “Did you hear? The Kanous’ boy stopped going to school!” Jijilea went on: “It finally got to where it couldn’t be overlooked anymore.”

  “That’s what the purge was for, wasn’t it?” Amatena said.

  “Yes, but if you confront them, just try to arrest them outright, no one’s going to play along. They all have backup plans, they all know how to get away. None of them are stupid, and some of them have a certain amount of status and authority.”

  Well... Fair enough. If you go around announcing that you’re out to end corruption, the corrupt people aren’t going to just sit there and wait for you to gather evidence and find witnesses. Even less so if they’re powerful enough to control others. I had a sneaking suspicion there might have been a sudden rash of suicides in Bahairam. Scary stuff.

  “See?” Jijilea smiled and brought her hands together in front of her face, like she was praying, or maybe asking for a little favor. “Say, Sis, I’ve got a great idea...”

  “So we decided to put on a little show,” Jijilea said. “Officially, we told them we were going to gin up something to pin on you and then move to arrest you. But while they thought we were busy with that, we were looking for anything we could find against them.”

  Elvia, Amatena, and Clara all looked at each other, openly shocked. If what Jijilea was saying was true, then Amatena and Clara had been nothing but bait, a pretext, a trap laid to catch corrupt military officials. And the girls themselves hadn’t known anything about it; they had danced like a couple of puppets on strings.

  Now I understood why the Eleamachi tribe had been sent in. If Amatena and Clara never came back alive, then all was well and good. But if they were captured by the military police and interrogated, it might be discovered that they were actually innocent—and there couldn’t be anything worse for the corrupt officials. That was why they needed the beast girls dead... Yikes. Even scarier stuff.